Today is the day.
Did you buy my book yet? Did you? Did you?
Stay tuned over the next few weeks for some amigurumi tie-ins and giveaways!
Does this have anything to do with the fact that I had just bought my mom three copies? In any case, I’m back down to something like seventeen in the Canadian Short Stories category.
So, if you’re interested in getting a copy, how do you do it?
- Kobo: epub;
- Amazon: kindle;
- Amazon: paperback print-on-demand;
- Local area peeps: I have a bunch of paper copies coming by the end of the month. You can buy them off me if you are local once they come in. I will let everyone know when they are here.
- As someone who has spent the last ten years un- or under-employed, if you would like a copy but it just isn’t in your finances right now, just send me a line and I will send you an epub or a PDF if you’d like. If you are local, I can lend you a paper copy when they come in. I understand how frustrating it is in this stage of late-capitalism to even try to survive, let alone buy any non-necessities.
And, if reading or short stories aren’t your thing, just send me a smile and be on your way 🙂
That’s right! Fifteen short stories, all written by me, coming out on October 12th.
Interested in learning more? The media kit is available here: The Summer The School Burned Down Media Kit.
And stay tuned for giveaways and kawaii, book-adjacent, posts over the next little while.
Someone sent me a bevy of kind words about Enid on the weekend, and so I said to myself Meghan, says I, You should use your blog for more than complaining about how no one will publish you because that is depressing. Also, maybe you should fix up your blog a bit because you put a filler template on a few months ago and then wandered off to play video games and do your paid job for a bit.
Well, my paid work is coming to an end and maybe I should do some more stuff here. Like most people, COVID burned through me quickly, then some illness issues (non-COVID) with family, then paid employment (non-writing) took up the rest of my time. My brain isn’t even mush. It’s whatever is after mush, which I guess is fungus? Mold? Dust? Maybe just a rattling sound?
I did start a screed a month-or-so ago. Basically I started writing down everything that I hate in this dimension, and what I might possibly hate in other dimensions. The screed is quite sour and made-up, but no one will believe it is made-up and I’ll get those comments again (such as with Enid, when a famous Canadian writer/radio-personality asked me “Where did you do your research?” so I told her it is a book about faeries; I made that shit up. Then there was a long pause and I couldn’t tell which one of us was less attached to reality) about how I make people I know feel bad because everyone assumes everything I write is about them.
When I get to one hundred and sixty pages in my screed, I am going to wrap it up, call it a novella, and move on. But move on to what?
- Enid 2? I mean, Amber is still stuck in faerie land and there are lots of loose ends. I do have an Enid 2 kicking about, unfinished, but it was weird, even for me.
- Dutch WWII story? Except I’m still not good enough to write a story about a massive traumatic event without exploiting the event for cheap emotion.
- New blog layout? I used to spend hours trying to perfect the best blog layout. Now, I click the default WordPress theme and leave it for three or four years.
Ten years ago, I was going to be a writer. Today, I am pleased with myself for remembering to eat. I went through at least one depressive episode (surprisingly before COVID) and have been just dealing with COVID-stay-afloating for the past two plus years. Another author I know talks a lot about how art is necessary for making sense of overwhelming events, but I’m not sure what I create is meant for that. Also, I’m not creating.
Blog layout may change over the next few days as I try to get back on the creating track. Or I might just go by some TSP degreaser and pretend that if I’m cleaning at least I’m not as useless as I likely actually am.
Today in my writing I described a watermelon as watermelon-shaped so I’m guess I’m not going to be winning any awards for writing quality any time soon.
I am trying to be good; as soon as something is rejected, I send it out again.
But oh my goodness, do I ever want to quit. But if I stop writing, then what? What do I do with all the noise in my head? No one has even been very clear with me about how to keep the noise at bay.
Look, I just can’t submit to any more journals that need me to pay some fee to do so. Or contests with $25 fees. I made $25 last year from writing, and the suggestion, with this $25 I earned, was that maybe I would like to donate it back to the magazine in question.
I am trying to write again. And today, I’m going through and submitting everything that hasn’t been submitted in a while. But, refusing to pay $3 here or $4 there or $25/$35/$50 contest submission fees really shrinks the possibilities. Plus the paper-only ones, like I want to buy an envelope, pay for postage, pay for return envelope stamp, only to have them email me their rejection because while I am forced to go old school, they are allowed not to?
I am sad and I am angry and I am not making a sustainable wage, so sorry all you journals/websites/etc., I can’t subsidize you any more.
I keep getting rejected by the same publisher for the same work.
To be clear, I only submitted this work to this publisher once. But, seemingly, after the work gets rejected, it doesn’t get shredded or thrown out, but put back in the their slush pile, and then later, read again, to be rejected again. I was rejected for the third time today.
Yesterday I finished a book, published by this publisher, and I was like “My work is better than that.”
All of this makes me grumpy.
I think I will write a story about the typesetting info pages at the back of books.
Then I will write a story of only one syllable words and if that word doesn’t exist in English, I’ll have to take it from another language. This will be my excuse to buy translation dictionaries and a whole new bookshelf on which they will sleep.
My microfiction Breathe has been published here!
So I was still a professional author in 2021. Hooray!
2021 reading stats to come.